1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to photograph printing, in particularly to the system and method of the photograph printing service.
2. Description of Related Art
Photograph is an important media for recording and displaying the activities of living, traveling and working. After the digital camera was invented in recent decades, the photograph can be generated and stored in digital files, which widely expands the use of the photograph.
As the internet technology is developing, nowadays the transmission of the photograph on the internet becomes much easier. Beside that, as the semiconductor technology keeps evolving, the capacity of storage device is increasing and its cost is cheaper. That provide users with more convenient in storing and using the photograph.
Although it is very convenient for users to store digital photograph in a storage device, somehow the need of printing out the physical photograph from digital format still exists. However, in some situations, users will still need physical photograph for memorial purpose or the others.
Generally speaking, there are few steps to print out photograph from digital files as follows. First, the customer has to choose the digital photo files to be printed, and then bring the digital photo files to printing shop. The customer has to wait for certain time and then go the printing shop again for getting the printed photograph.
However, there are several disadvantages among the above steps. The customer needs to arrive at the printing shop twice, the first time is for delivering the digital photo files and the second time is for receiving the physical photograph. And the time duration between the delivering the digital photo files and the receiving the physical photograph will also eliminate the desire to obtain the physical photograph. Because of the above mentioned inconvenience, user usually will wait for a long time to collect enough digital photograph files and then print them out.
Therefore, there are some web portals offering printing services, which allow user to upload digital photograph files through computers and the internet. After printing out from the digital photograph files, the physical photograph will be sent to the user by post. User will no longer need to arrive at the printing shop to print out the physical photograph.
Such web portals will offer printing services after obtain users' registration information which may include real name, phone number, address or even the credit card number. Such that the physical photograph can be sent to the user according to the name and address information and charged the printing and shipping fees according to the credit card information.
However, many users are not willing to provide personal information for registration on internet, not only because the data filling procedures are tiresome, but also because the account, password and related data need to be memorized to access the web portals. Beside that, a computer is needed for performing the above mentioned files upload procedures, which limits the application timing of the printing services and also reduce the frequency of using the printing services.